Chapter 2

I made it to my building without incident. I had my keys in my pocket, so I simply got in the car and drove back to the place I'd left Arthur. I parked at the quiet end of the alley and walked down it, my heart pounding. Would he still be there?

He hadn't moved. He huddled on the ground, arms wrapped around his raised knees, blood still oozing from the cuts on his head.

"Hey." I touched his shoulder.

He looked up and licked his bloody lips. His chin and jaw were slick red, and little rivulets had run down his neck onto his chest in the open "V" of his green shirt.

"We have to get out of here." I slid my hands under his arms and pulled him up. He wrapped an arm around my neck and leaned on me, his body shaking and uncoordinated. I had to half-carry him down the alley to the car. He couldn't put one foot in front of the other without his legs starting to collapse under him. How much blood had he lost?

No one was in sight when we emerged from the alley. I opened the back door of the car and manoeuvred him inside. He curled up on the seat, invisible from the outside unless someone stood close to the car. I dived into the driver's seat, started the engine, and drove back the way I'd come.

Arthur barely seemed conscious when I tried to get him out of the car. Blood dripped onto my hand as I pulled him out, and when I finally got him on his feet, he turned his head away and threw up. I imagined it was mostly the blood he'd swallowed, but there was a lot of it. Perhaps he was bleeding internally, too.

Somehow, we made it into the lift, which was working for once, and then into my apartment. Arthur sank onto the couch and closed his eyes.

"Don't go to sleep. You might have a concussion." I recalled the training I'd had in the marines and got to work checking him over. I sat on the coffee table in front of him while I did so. "Arthur, open your eyes. Look at me." I dabbed at the cuts on either side of his head, quickly establishing they were superficial. I cleaned them up and wiped off his face paint with a wet cloth, revealing ghastly pale skin underneath. Blood oozed from his mouth and down his neck, and he suddenly grabbed the cloth from me and coughed up into it.

"Are you hurt anywhere else?" I ran my hands over his torso inside his jacket, feeling ribs protruding, but no breaks. He didn't flinch or make any sign of injury. "No pain here?" I felt his stomach. "Let me check your mouth."

He opened his mouth and I quickly saw the problem—a deep cut in his lower gum, and another on the inside of his cheek. This latter one was bad, probably caused by his teeth when the car crashed. I found a wad of gauze in my first aid kit and put it in his mouth. "Put your teeth together. Keep this pressed onto your cheek."

He did as instructed, and stared at me, unfocussed, from eyes that I saw now, in the light, were green. When they started to roll up in in his head, I moved to the couch and sat beside him. I gripped his jaw, trying not to squeeze hard enough to make the cuts more painful, and carefully shook him. "Arthur! Come on, stay with me."

He blinked, and his irises came into view again, the pupils huge. He tried to push my hand away.

"I'm trying to help you. Keep biting on that gauze. You've lost a lot of blood."

He mumbled something around the wadding and gestured at me with one hand.

"My name's Travis," I said. "I drive a taxi."

He pulled the gauze out of his mouth. "Why did you help me?"

"I don't know." I paused. "You remind me of myself."

"Did you see?" He dabbed at his mouth and swallowed. "What I did?"

"Yes."

He stiffened.

"I'm not judging you."

His eyes rolled back, and he slumped against the cushions.

"Arthur!" He was unconscious. I checked him over and discovered he was breathing. His pulse was rapid, but steady. Blood seeped from the corner of his mouth and ran down his neck. I slid my finger into his mouth to open it, and pushed a fresh piece of gauze in. He didn't stir.

I got up to switch on the TV. The news was on, showing a reporter standing in front of Murray Franklin's studio and describing in a shocked voice how Murray was shot dead on live television. The picture flicked to a re-run of Arthur shouting at Murray, then shooting him. After that, a different reporter was shown in Gotham Square, with a backdrop of burning cars and people being arrested. He described the rioting and the fact that Joker had escaped from the crashed police car and was at large in the city. He was being hunted by every available cop.

I glanced at Arthur, and suddenly he opened his eyes again. Apparently, he had merely passed out. He stared at me for a moment, then turned his attention to the TV. The studio reporter was advising that the perimeter of the city was being monitored by armed police, and that any attempt by Joker to escape, would prompt a forceful response.

Arthur removed the gauze from his mouth. There was less blood on it and the flow seemed to have been stemmed. "They're going to kill me," he said. His words slurred as he struggled to form them with his injured mouth. "As soon as they see me, I'm dead."

"You need to get out of the city."

"I don't think that's going to happen. Are you watching this?" He gestured at the screen.

I hesitated. I'd been thinking about leaving Gotham—I hated the damn place. Why had I helped him? I'd told myself I went out there to see what was happening, out of curiosity. But hadn't a little part of me wanted to find him? And now here I was, with a person everyone thought was a psycho, in my apartment. Why had I done that if not to help him?

"I can get you out of the city," I said.

Arthur let out a wild screech of laughter, which stopped as abruptly as it started. "Are you a magician?"

"No, I was a marine."

"Was?"

"I got an honourable discharge after Vietnam." I gritted my teeth, hoping he wouldn't ask for any details. No one knew what I'd been through there, except for the half a dozen therapists I'd wasted my time with in New York.

Arthur nodded slowly. "Why would you help me?" he asked again. "I killed Murray Franklin. Those three guys on the train, too. And others."

"I killed a bunch of people in New York." I opened the drawer where I kept the newspaper cuttings and took out the main one. It showed a picture of me when I still had my mohawk and described how I'd saved Iris and rid the city of a few of its many child pimps. I passed it to Arthur.

"This was you?" He looked up, wide-eyed. "I remember it being on the news." He paused and brushed his fingers over his lips, checking for blood. A small smear came away on his thumb, but the worst of it seemed to have stopped. "Travis Bickle," he said, reading from the article. He looked up again. "I'm Arthur Fleck. I, um, I need to get some stuff from my apartment."

"That's not gonna happen. They'll be watching it."

"But everything I own is there. All I have with me is the clothes I'm wearing."

"Then I'll go tomorrow and see if I can get in without arousing suspicion. If you tell me what you want, I'll try to get it."

He nodded. "All right. Thank you. Do you have any cigarettes? I must have lost mine out there."

"Sure." I pulled the pack out of my pocket along with my lighter and passed them to him. While he lit one, I fetched him a glass of water. "You'd better drink this. You'll be dehydrated from the blood-loss. You passed out a couple of times. Do you feel dizzy? Headache or anything?"

"No, not really."

"Good. I don't think you have a concussion. You were unconscious when they got you out of the cop car."

"You were there?"

"Yes."

Arthur sucked hard on his cigarette and blew the smoke out of his nose. "What's New York like?"

"It's like Gotham, but cleaner."

"That would be an improvement. I, um, I don't have much money. Only my last week's pay."

"It doesn't matter. I have some. We can figure things out when we get there." I glanced at my wristwatch. "I'm gonna try and get a couple of hours' sleep. Will you be all right here? I'll get you a blanket."

"I'm fine. I don't really sleep much. I have insomnia."

I snorted. "We have that in common, too." I fetched him a blanket and pillow, then went to bed.

As usual, I tossed and turned, unable to switch my mind off. It was more active than usual, as I thought about leaving Gotham the next day and trying to get past a potential roadblock with Arthur in the car. If I got caught, I'd be locked up and if they didn't kill him, he'd probably spend the rest of his life in Arkham State Hospital—the nuthouse.

I slid my hand under my pillow to check my gun was still there. I'd left my guns behind in New York when I left, but I'd picked up a Colt on the black market not long after I arrived in Gotham. You never knew when you might need a gun. Now, I had a slightly crazy killer in my apartment, and although he seemed calm and appreciative of my help so far, it didn't mean that wouldn't change. I didn't know him. He might go for me with one of my kitchen knives while I slept.

I did sleep, but only for an hour. I woke with my hand still under the pillow, cradling the short barrel of the gun in my palm. I stayed in bed until dawn began to lighten my room, and I heard sounds from my living room as Arthur moved around. He went to the bathroom, then fetched some water from the kitchen, and lit a cigarette. My trained ears picked up every tiny sound.

I got up, took a piss and a shower, and got dressed, before I went to talk to him. He was sitting on the couch, wearing the green shirt and red suit trousers. The blanket was folded neatly on the arm of the couch with the pillow resting on top of it.

"Hey." I ran a hand over my damp hair, brushing the strands off my forehead. "You get any sleep?"

"A little."

He looked different from yesterday. All I could remember was the painted clown face I'd first seen on TV, having forgotten what he looked like when I washed off the paint. His skin was pale and his face too thin. He'd washed off the remnants of the paint I'd missed, and the blood from his neck. His green hair seemed strange now he appeared relatively normal. His mouth was swollen, and his temples were bruised around the cuts there.

"You want some coffee?" I offered.

"No, just water is fine." He gestured at the glass on the table.

"Breakfast?"

He shook his head.

"You look half-starved," I blurted.

He flinched and colour crept into his cheeks. There was an issue there, but I didn't pursue it.

"All right. I'm gonna have some. Then I'll see if I can get into your apartment." I passed him a notebook and pen. "Write down the address, and what you want me to get from there. I'll do the best I can. If they have it guarded, I won't be able to."

"That's okay." He began to write, in ugly misspelled words like a child.

I made coffee and toast and smoked while I ate. It was seven o'clock—too early for me to go out without drawing attention. As a taxi driver, I was often on the roads at all hours, but visiting the apartment of a hunted killer? Probably not a good time to be in the vicinity.

I spent some time packing my belongings into two holdalls. I didn't have a lot of stuff. The apartment was rented furnished, so it was just clothes and shoes, video tapes, a few records and other crap. I couldn't take the TV and video recorder with me. I didn't want to make it too obvious I was leaving the city, because if my car was checked, it would prompt questions.

Arthur sat quietly smoking and sipping water while I worked. I wondered about him, but it wasn't the time to start asking questions. We had a long drive ahead of us, if we could get out of Gotham. I could learn about him then.